The Search for the Best Coffee
As I was comfortably sipping away on a balanced washed Kenyan coffee at one of my favorite coffee shops in Denver, Aviano, one of the regulars asked me if I had ever tried the coffee that passes through the digestive track of a monkey.
It actually isn’t a monkey. It’s called the Asian palm civet.
Most people have read about it by now, but there’s a rare and extremely expensive specialty coffee called Kopi Luwak that is made from partially digested coffee fruit that are eaten and then pooped out by this Asian cat-like mammal.
One cup of the poop coffee can sell for $80.
Hard pass for me. No pun intended.
It’s probably from the same people who assure you that the coffee in Italy is the best.
I recall my first visit there over a decade ago and there’s something magical about drinking a cappuccino while sitting at a café in the Italian Alps or in Milan. But I’m now convinced it tasted good because I was in Italy.
The truth is Italians aren’t known for serving top notch single origin coffees from around the world. They buy run-of-the-mill beans, roast them, and blend them with steamed milk. Sometimes even sugar.
It’s actually quite rare to even see a coffee shop serving single origin coffee in Italy, and I’ve yet to see one that serves any hand-poured coffee. I’m sure they exist, but it’s just not a common thing.
So instead, I’ve been busy traveling the world looking for the best coffee. Grown on a coffee shrub, then coffee cherries picked, dried and either processed naturally, washed or some other way, then roasted to perfection.
No cat poop needed to find the best coffee. It would be easy to find the best if one country held the key.
Guatemala. Rwanda. Mexico. Ethiopia. Bolivia. Yemen. Kenya. Honduras. Burundi. Columbia. Panama. To name some of the wonderful places good coffee is grown.
Growing conditions and geography can definitely affect taste because of altitude, soil type, rainfall and shade can influence sweetness, acidity, body, and complexity.
But that’s only the start of the conversation.
When the coffee fruit is picked, and then how it’s dried, processed and roasted, also all can have a huge impact on flavor. Even how long after the beans are roasted before they are brewed can impact taste.
When coffee cherries are ripe, they usually turn red, yellow, or orange depending on the variety. They can be hand-picked selectively for only the perfect ripe cherries or strip-picked all at once, which is faster but less precise. Picking affects taste because underripe cherries can add sour or grassy notes, while overripe cherries can create fermented or overly fruity flavors. That’s why mass-produced coffees tend not to taste as good.
After harvest, coffee cherries must be dried to reduce moisture so the beans can be stored and roasted. Drying can happen in several different ways. On raised beds, patio-like floors, or in mechanical dryers, with slower sun-drying often adding more complexity but requiring careful turning and protection. Drying affects taste because uneven or rushed drying can create musty, flat, or harsh flavors, while careful drying can preserve sweetness and clarity.
There are also several ways coffee beans can be processed once dried, which involves removing the fruit from around the coffee seed.
The main types of processing are washed/wet process, which gives cleaner flavors; natural/dry process, which gives fruitier heavier flavors; and honey processed/pulped natural, which falls somewhere in between.
There’s also a lesser used method called anaerobic processing, where freshly harvested coffee cherries, sometimes depulped, are placed in a sealed, oxygen-limited tank or container to ferment before drying. This process can create more intense and unusual flavors and add big fruit notes, like berries, tropical fruit, grape, or cherry, wine-like or boozy flavors, heavier body, sometimes fermented tastes and bright acidity.
Processing affects taste because it determines how much fruit contact the bean has, which in turn can determined whether the coffee tastes clean, floral, bright, syrupy, funky, or fruit-forward.
The final step, roasting, is what transforms processed green coffee beans through heat, where it develops aroma, sweetness, acidity, body, and bitterness. Light roasts preserve more origin flavor and acidity and often have more caffeine. Medium roasts balance sweetness and body. And dark roasts emphasize roast flavor, bitterness, and heavier body. Roasting affects taste because even small changes in time and temperature can transform coffee from bright and delicate to sweet and balanced or smoky and bitter.
With all of these steps in the making of coffee, now we understand why geography isn’t completely determinative of how good that cup will be.
Ethiopian coffees, for example, are typically known to be fruitier than other places. Tastes of citrus or sweet flowers are common. Often a bit too tangy for my taste if I’m being honest.
But when I was in Addis Ababa coffee shop hopping, I was introduced to at least a half dozen different coffees. Processed differently. Roasted differently. And it turns out, not all Ethiopian coffees are super bright or tangy. I’ve sampled some very balanced and mild chocolaty ones there, too.
On the other hand, in Antigua, Guatemala, where the coffee is grown in volcanic soil, though processing and roasting still matters, there’s something extra special about the beans from there. I must’ve sampled a dozen coffees, most from my favorite coffee shop there, Artista de Café.
In Kigali, Rwanda, though English isn’t as commonly spoken and my Kinyarwanda hasn’t graduated past a dozen words, I got to try several Rwandan varieties, each one better than the next.
Mexico has also dazzled my coffee taste buds. Especially washed processed ones from Chiapas, near the border of Guatemala.
In Panama City, Panama, one coffee shop owner brewed me some small batch beans he purchased at an auction. I think I paid about $15 for one cup. Just 8 ounces of these special beans I took back home were $50. But pure deliciousness. It was like splurging for the reserve wine.
In Buenos Aries, many coffee shops serve a lot of top-notch Columbian coffees. One café in particular, Café Vive, had at least eight different types from Columbia.
Oddly enough, though, three of my favorite coffee shops are in countries that don’t grow their own coffee. They import from the wonderful places I just mentioned.
One in Auckland, New Zealand, called Slow Koi, they served up hand-brewed coffees from Guatemala, Kenya, Bolivia and Honduras.
Another in Riyadh, called Ashjar, that serves top notch coffees from around the world.
My favorite remains a small coffee shop in Seoul, South Korea, Sim Coffee House.
The coffees the owner served up from Papua New Guinea, Guatemala and Kenya were perfect. Though, I admit, I could’ve had an Italian-like bias since the owner shared so much love in every hand-brewed cup that I was just happy to visit each day.
And that’s what’s great about the best coffee shops.
It’s for sure about great coffees. But it’s also the entire experience. The smells. The atmosphere. And the good conversations with baristas around the globe.
Coffee + Love = A Great Way to Start the Day
Jeffrey Kass is a lawyer, award-winning author, law professor, speaker and thought leader on race and ethnicity. He’s also an avid coffee enthusiast and fashion connoisseur. Some of his articles can be found at https://medium.com/@jeffreykass, his website www.jeffreykassglobal.com and on instagram @jeffreykass01.
